


yesterday's arousal

by sade12



Category: American Psycho - All Media Types
Genre: (somewhat?), Bad Decisions, Character Study, Dialogue Heavy, Drabble, Gen, M/M, Me Rambling For 3000 Words About A Pairing I Like Practically Aimlessly, Mental Breakdown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-07
Updated: 2018-06-07
Packaged: 2019-05-19 12:42:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14873949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sade12/pseuds/sade12
Summary: Icelandic themed dinner, skin care, and disparity in objectives.(IOW Patrick freaks out again.)





	yesterday's arousal

**Author's Note:**

> Some of you may remember that in my last some fanart chapter I mentioned I'd been sitting on this for some time now... and here it is in its fullest glory for all of you! I enjoyed writing it even though the plot is somewhat thin.  
> Now that my internet is back I am able to post this and I'm very happy about it because I consider this my best AP story to date... I don't know, it's just good. Agree? Disagree? Read and find out U_U
> 
> As always, thank you for reading at all. Just knowing you guys appreciate what I do is enough to keep me doing it. Much love and kisses always, and may you be blest in every endeavor. Okay enough with my Love do what you came here to do!

“No, still looking, thanks.”

Upon rejection, she rounds over to me.

I’m here at Price’s dartboard Zagat selection, lucid as God, with my legs crossed underneath the table. Nobody can see this, of course, and I don’t expect them to, but being so cogent steadies me. The waitress is female and she hovers just over me, looming, notebook in hand, pen in the other.

“How about you?”

Mainstream restaurant owners would like to believe that I, and their many other patrons, have not noticed this underlying shift of demographic. Women need more jobs because being a housewife for whatever reason no longer suits just over half of America’s mass. Swarm. Mob. I’m not sure which of those words describes us best seeing as they all fit for a different reason.

I’ve digressed; therefore, there is a subtle rearing of hundreds, thousands, millions, _billions_ of female maître’d and waitresses. You can’t get away from them. You can’t get away from them. Am I bothered? No, not particularly, but I’ve noticed and I can’t help but say I’m angry I didn’t receive the memo like everyone else seems to have. Again, it’s unclear. It strikes me as though there was a gender imbalance between the humble yet poignant role of the maître’d and that of the waitress- I may even agree with that-

“Well.” I click my tongue. “I’ve perused the menu and I’m not quite sure yet.”

-but let’s be objective, female bodies already dominate popular culture. This same arousal can’t be applied to that of ordinary bodies- those of men’s- because there is a certain sort of dangerous allure deep within a woman’s physical form, a global fascination, that does not exist for their male counterparts. Menstruation, reproduction, their reduced aging speed, their reduced physical aging speed, how some seem to have baby faces well into their nineties or so. Not only have these qualities been admired en masse historically, we also, in a more contemporary setting, use them to clearly demarcate and distinguish the male and the female. That old physical maxim about reduced aging speed frightens me. They don’t have to _try_ to look young. _We_ do. Reduced aging speed. Reduced aging. Why live so long? Why not just… die?

Carruthers sits to my left, gaping at me. He gets _too close_. “We can split a thing if you can’t choose.”

Moreover, not every female waitress seems to be above average in appearance. In order to get larger amounts of business as well as form a meritocracy structure, only the most attractive should be selected. Then it’s not a problem of selecting a qualified worker and it’s so much simpler for everybody involved. Men eating together- like we are- no longer have the problem of seeming homosexual, and an agreeable discussion topic arises- imagine the following: “God, did you see her at the front?” in McDermott’s voice. He told me this once and I’m appropriately reminded of it, and I’m also reminded of the time he said “Your waitress is like your temporary wife. You’re not married, but you- it’s her job to act like you are. Be faithful and fetching. You can yell at her, but you shouldn’t.”

Anyway, back to my idea. It’s efficient, modernized heterosexuality and I am at the forefront of it. I’ll leave him a note tomorrow suggesting this idea. I’m sure he’ll agree with it. All of this, and we have a resurgence of housewives. I should run for president next year. I am a modern visionary. I’m not just some idealist who _has_ these thoughts but markets them poorly- you see those soapbox types of speakers with their plans to gene-splice hass avocadoes and fish skin with duck eggs and make a new form of Caucasian Caviar who act like they genuinely believe shouting at a crowd of rapidly moving passerby will commence this glorious supposed revolution in human thinking.

“Give him a minute,” Allen says, across the table, swatting his hand at Carruthers.

It’s amazing how you can be surrounded by people on all sides, that including people you know, but still feel so naked and bare. Hollow. This year, so many people have failed me personally as well as professionally.

Luis Carruthers was forged within the deep grasp of the pits of hellbred magma in the ocean and was landed for the simple purpose of inconviencing me. He needs… a muzzle. Something like that.

Carruthers responds. Allen waits, I don’t know, an entire minute before responding to him. I understand his hesitancy.  A dialogue starts between McDermott and Price. I slide seamlessly between expressions, scrutinizing the word salad on my menu before slapping it down and calmly addressing everyone at once:

“I think I’ll try something a little different today.”

I get mixed reception from all sides:

“Yeah?”

“Ooh!”

“That’s new.”

“Pfft.”

“Yes.” I switch my legs and go for a sip of water and strategically turn the motion into holding onto the silverware when I realize I’m in the absence of a glass. Right. We haven’t ordered drinks yet. Right. We’re ordering now. Right. I’m first. Right.

“Vhat’ll it be, shhen?” The waitress smiles at me. She has a German accent, which strikes me, because this restaurant is Icelandic themed—  that entire concept is a headache, and is the precise reason I accuse this of being a flipped-open-to-random-page ordeal— and her being here is somewhat like, I don’t know, a Chilean man in a Korean hangover stew bistro. I like her miniskirt. Accessible.

I clear my throat.

“For my appetizer I’m thinking something light, compact. I went over the menu, I’d say, five or six times. Front to back, and the appetizer section is disappointingly bare, especially for a venue with such a large kitchen, mind you. Regardless, my point. Because of this shortcoming I’ll be reaching into the main course selection which is entirely tasteless but given these circumstances I’m given no other choice. Yes, then. I’ll have the sirloin, medium-well. I never do medium-well, but I’d really like to taste the death of the animal. Char the _fuck_ out of it. Broil it. Leave the edges raw and crunchy. I want the outside to look like Chernobyl’s nuclear reactor. Smother it in onions and garlic but _leave the garlic to the side._ I want to apply them my _self_. Next, for the main course, I’ll have fettuccine with sauerkraut. Cover it in mozzarella, but not too much. Let it drip and run over it, but not too much. To chase this, a rack of ribs, but only four. I’m trying to watch my diet. My doctor has prescribed for me a certain way to eat ribs so that my indigestion won’t act up: layer them all in garlic, roast them for thirty minutes, flip them, and re-layer them. Let them _cool._ When they’re done, they ought to be shimmering in a whitish-goldish kind of color, and if they’re not, start over. I’ll pay extra, I don’t care, but not if it takes more than three times. That’s ridiculous, isn’t it? What is this place, four stars? Hm. What part of Germany are you from? I’ll have a red wine with my appetizer… Whatever the chef recommends. Actually, scratch that, would you? I’m in the mood for some Malbec. Make sure it’s at least fifteen years old. A glass of water, too, if you’d be so considerate. Oh, make it cucumber water, if you'd be so considerate. I hear it’s good for the skin. I want ten triangular slices and five normal rounded slices, if you'd be so considerate.. Any more, any less, and my OCD’ll flare up. You don’t want to see that side of me here. I’ll also sue. One more thing- I’d like the desert menu early, as well, if you’d be so considerate.”

I pull out my nail file and get to work. I have to look down, because I know I’m being stared at, and if I were to look up I’d burst into frenetic laughter and in doing so ruin the illusion of this being an actual order. No, for now, it seems real, and I can hear the waitress stuttering. She knows I can buy and sell her within the same hour and she’s too afraid to ask for a simple pardon. After twenty more seconds of this I’ll look up and sardonically ask if everyone’s having what I’m having, and-

“We could _definitely_ split that.”

And then as if I’m the fucking joke everyone around me is laughing. And then I look up to see Carruthers, grinning at me. And then he winks. And then I’m scalding with this burning heat which washes over me and is gone as quick as it came, but the embers remain. And then I’m pursing my lips until I taste blood.

“Carru _thers,_ ” I spit.

“Don’t worry, don’t worry. I’ll cover my half!”

The uproar continues. The surges continue. It’s like the Anfal Campaign, but worse. I flinch. The waitress is in on it, too. It wasn’t supposed to be a two-person thing. That wasn’t the joke. The joke is I make a _ridiculous_ conceited order seeming like an arrogant businessman but then I reveal I was kidding the entire time. He’s shifted the focus. I open my mouth as if I’m going to say something, I close my eyes and remember my state just moments ago, and what I felt like, and when my eyes are open again the waitress has moved counterclockwise and is now taking what she must consider to be an actual order because I can see from here her notepad is perfectly blank. Pure. White. Lines. Nothing. And she’s going to continue her current circuit until she wraps back to me, and she’s undoubtedly going to make a joke about what I said which is only going to twist the knife. I can feel all the weight of my body conduit down into my feet. And there’s Allen’s voice, in between laughs, declaring Carruthers isn’t ‘as bad as I thought’.

I feel it. A compulsion. A burning sensation in the back of my head, a metallic taste at the roof of my mouth, and I’m in the bathroom before I can register I’ve excused myself.

My indexes trace the underside of my jaw and I assess what felt like reconstitution; my atoms, scrambling and spreading physically through time and space, continually miniaturizing and saturating until I appeared _here._ If I exit now, she’ll likely still be there tapping her pages waiting for the final, fifth order, and I’m not going to give that to her. I’m going to wait here. Going to sit here. I’m comforted with myself entirely. I’m here to wait, catch up with myself, and I’m going to exit once I’m human again. I inhale and exhale. I fidget. I try to heal my exit wounds by willing my body to do it and it doesn’t work. I bite my arm and pretend I’m killing things on a massive scale. I check my watch. I check it again. I sit in the stall for a minute and get up a few times to stretch my legs. I check my watch. I pick at my eyelashes.

I hear the door open, doesn’t bother me. I continue going about my face until I can feel through some enhanced, deep-seated proximity awareness I am being speculated, and I let my eyes do what feels natural.

“Patrick?”

I choose not to respond because my toner is much more imperative. I brought it with me as my skin has been noticeably drier lately. I’m assuming it’s the cold. If he wants my attention, he’ll have to do something to earn it. He’s barely material, he’s just a type of… undefined generalization. I feel something cold press up against the back of my eyeballs.

“You’ve been in here for ten minutes. Are you okay?”

“Never better.”

“Are you… mad, at me?”

“No,” I say, but my voice curves at the end like I’m asking a question. It was a poor attempt by my body to stifle down the urge to yell something vulgar.

“Well, you  _sound_ like you’re mad at me. Was it what I said?” Carruthers comes over with his tail between his legs. “For the record, I found your joke funny.”

He was giggling at random intervals, so he’s telling the truth. At least he has the sense to not lie to me in an enclosed space where there are no security cameras and I’m carrying a butterfly knife in my left pocket.

I say the following very fast: “Thenyoushould’veleftitalone.” There’s a subtle yet forceful vitriol sitting behind these words, and I press into my cheek a little too hard for comfort. I don’t look his way. I’m then slammed by a dizzying feeling of unreality and I lean all my weight into my elbows.

“I thought I was helping. Nobody laughed and I felt bad.”

“Okay.”

“I mean, if _that’s_ what you’re worried about, they were laughing _with_ you, not at you.”

“I wasn’t laughing, Luis.”

He pauses.

“You weren’t being serious about that? You weren’t really going to have Mal _bec_ and _cucumber water_ in the same sitting? Ribs _and_ sirloin? How are you that slim? I mean, you know, not that you _ought_ to be overweight- but if you’re eating all _that-”_

“Me? Serious? About anything? Haha. No, never. It was a joke. You’re right. Hahahahahahahaha.” Identity is a notion. Identity changes with mood. I think of the last time I’ve heard Tchaikovsky. “Give me five minutes, I’ll be out.”

“I can… wait for five minutes,” Carruthers then says in that inquisitive-yet-perplexed way, and he moves around me in this semicircular sidestep somewhat like the way a snake would approach an unguarded clutch of bird eggs inexplicably laying on the ground. He gets closer by small increments and the frustration that builds within me sends pulsing drives up and down my arms that scream ‘grab him, pull him over here and finish what he’s failing to start’ and I am drowning myself in translucent toner in a weak attempt to weaken my impulses. His body grows and shrinks in my peripheral vision and the sudden increase of motion that my brain is forced to digest and classify makes me nauseous.

“Idon’tneedyoutodothatthanks.”

“What?”

“I don’t need you. Thanks.”

He huffs. “ _Well_ , so- _rry,_ ” And then he’s in distinct motion, gripping onto my forearm and I break into a cold sweat. Liquid runs from my medulla to my core. His nails are long but I don’t register the pain it inflicts, rather picturing it as just another insufferable blockade that temporarily prevents my escape. Luis Carruthers gets _too close again_ and whispers, loudly, “You haven’t changed a bit. Do you know that?”

“Has it ever occurred to you that some people— don’t want to change?”

“I know you don’t. God knows I know you don’t, Patrick.”

“Does it matter? Does it fucking matter?”

“Yes! Like, Jesus. Patrick, you’re so… nobody can get through to you. You tell a joke and you act like it wasn’t one when it backfires. Who does that? Nobody does that.” As he often does, he realizes he’s being too insistent and glaringly out of the character he’s created for himself and his approach switches into passive twink: “...But you, and I want to know why. Talk to me, please?”

“Oh my God.”

“Can we please talk?”

Suddenly I’m humming Crystal Waters’ _Gypsy Woman._ I can hear it reverberating harshly around my skull, particularly around the region of my teeth.

“Is that Gypsy Woman?”

“I have to go call Jean,” I say, pushing by him. I’ve left my toner bottle which I realize— is now empty– and I look at the mirror– and I’m liquefied. My face is oozing with this shimmering, transparent fluid and it’s running down onto my Dolce and Gabbana ivory button-up with thin black vertical indentations in a pinstriped look and— my skin has succumbed to the insistence of it– and I can see a newly developed pimple. Oh my God. Oh my God

“Call Jean? _Now?_ And tell her what?”

I’m thinking of breaking my nose. I want to punch something so hard my entire fist is shattered internally. I want to destroy my nerve endings and suffer from joint pain for the rest of my life.  Locusts are coming out of my mouth. I open my eyes. I don’t blink. I stare at that one spot, the pimple just by my cupid’s bow. I let my arms feel heavier. I let my feet hurt. I become unfocused. I’m skin. Nothing beneath that.

“UhhehrhhehrgbHGHhnsrrehr How much fucking ALCOHOL was in this witch hazel oh God 20 PERCENT”

“Patrick…”

I mellow, somewhat.

“Let go of me.”

Carruthers rounds me carefully. “I think now might be… the best time for this. I’ve wanted to talk to you about something for a while now, Pat. Okay? Back in college I took this course for a little bit, right? I mean, after a couple of weeks I realized I didn’t like it much, but it was a psych course. Psychology.  And, I don’t know, I was thinking about some of the stuff we went over…”

“Whatdoesanyofthathavetodowithme.”

“I’m getting there. It’s just… Essentially, it’s… Pat, if you’ve got, I don’t know, some kind of mental illness, don’t you think that’s something we all should’ve known about?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Luis for the love of God if you really think I’m going to stand here and let your undergrad ass psychoanalyze me in a fucking Godforsaken Icelandic restaurant in Chelsea.”

“I am _not_ an undergrad, excuse you. And I’m not trying to _psychoanalyze_ you.  But all of your behavior links up with someone who’s-!”

Someone enters the bathroom. I hear them urinating and for one moment I rule over all life. They leave after giving us a confused glance and I am out of the realm of protective disillusionment.

“Someone who’s… When you get like this it’s very reminiscent of one of those personality or mood disorders.”

“You don’t know me.”

“But I want to! If you tell me what’s going on, then I can change the way I interact with you,” He forks his hand into mine. His hand. Into mine. “And then I won’t annoy you so much. See, it benefits both of us.”

His methods are evolving, and while he’s right about that form of cooperative therapy I want no part of it. The idea of him getting any closer frightens and threatens to destroy me. So I pull my butterfly knife out and jab it in his direction- as a warning, though I know he won’t do anything even if I did puncture him somehow. Carruthers takes the hint, but swallows and then, I fucking swear, his facial features blend together until he’s making _that face,_ that _one fucking face_ that every single analyst in Manhattan makes. The 'this is episodic and I need to be calm' face. And then I'm Darryl Revok.

Something starts to cycle through me at an implausible speed, and I feel faint, probably something in the toner. The label said there’s a high alcohol percentage and why I continue to use it is beyond me. I’m lost in that thought and sometime during that Luis has pried my knife out of my hand and closed it. He puts it somewhere, I don’t know where, and I swing at him in attempt to get it back. I fail.

“Patrick, I’ll give it back if you won’t try to st- try to stab me again with it.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to be _stabbed_ , obviously! And I don’t— I don’t want to keep holding it. I- It makes me feel weird. I don’t want it anymore. It’s yours, anyway–”

“No. Why do you always do this to me? Why can’t you just leave me alone? God, I-” I start wiping off my face with whatever’s available. My hands, my spare handkerchief, a moist towlette I happen to have stowed away.

I start humming Talking Heads’ _Mind_ and I speak over whatever contribution to the conversation Carruthers tries to put forward by breaking out in song, mimicking with my best octave David Byrne’s voice. “Time won’t change you… Money won’t change you. I haven’t got. The faintest ide- _yeaaaaaaaah._ ” I then, at some point, switch to _Artists Only_ and start howling: “I don’t have to prove… that I am creative! _I_ don’t have to _proooooove…_ thatIam _creative.”_

When Luis stares at me like my head is on fire, I ask, “What? Never heard of Talking Heads?”


End file.
